Nicene Creed

I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty,maker of heaven and earth,and all that is seen and unseen.I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.Through him all things were made.For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven:by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary,and became man.For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried.On the third day he rose againin fulfilment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.He will come again in gloryto judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.I believe in the Holy Spirit,the Lord, the giver of life,who proceeds from the Father and the Son.With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.He has spoken through the Prophets.I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.I look for the resurrection of the dead,and the life of the world to come.Amen

Defeat the HHS

...Original Sin is not a Capital Crime.

The Mission of this Blog

The Mission of this Blog is to bring light and truth to the world of those horrible events which comprise the satanic and masonic attack on Holy Mother Church called the French Revolution, and those attacks which continue today throughout the world.

I shall endevour to confine myself to the historical aspects including those events and persons which inspired, or were inspired by that period of French history, and how they relate to today.

I am a Roman Catholic in good standing, well Baptised and brought up in the Faith.

I am a Monarchist, and therefore I believe that a republican form of government is repugnant, and unsupported by scripture.

I believe that the American Revolution, and French Revolutions, including the Paris commune, were the inspiration for the communist revolutions.

I believe that God and God alone, not the masses, is the source of authority from whom all rulers, including presidents, are soley responsible.

I believe that His Most Christian Majesty in the person of Louis-Alphonse, Duc d'Anjou is the true and rightful King of France, and by God's Grace shall be restored to the ancient throne of France.

Jeanne La Pucelle

About Me

Sieur de Brantigny, dit Boisvert, witnessed by the Blessed Mother and the whole Court of Heaven, do solemnly swear by the Holy Gospels (which I touch with my hand) to be loyal and true to Monseigneur le Prince, Louis, le duc d'Anjou, de jure His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XX, by God's Grace King of France and Navarre and that I will do all that lays in my power to bring about his restoration to the Throne of his forefathers and the instauration of the Social Reign of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts in France and throughout the world. So help me God.
Vive Le Roi! Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!
.............................
Ret Marine, 22.5 yrs A/D 01/11/73-09/01/95. Member DAV,
Catechist Diocese of Richmond Va.

Followers

The "Cocarde Blanche" Award

Click on the Prince to see the current awardees

Prayer of Saint Richard

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,For all the benefits Thou hast won for me,For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother,May I know Thee more clearly,Love Thee more dearly,And follow Thee more nearly:For ever and ever.

The Battle of Yorktown was the climax of the Revolutionary War. The combined forces of General Washington, General Rochambeau, Admiral de Grasse, and General Lafayette all converged on the greatest concentration of British troops in America. It took great amounts of planning, courage, and skill to execute this attack. more

The British laid down their arms as their band played "The World Turn'd Upside Down". One version may be heard here. Alternate words may found here. An alernate verision which may have been played was "When the King Shall Enjoy His Own Again" found here... How appropriate... A condemnation of the Rouseau doctrine is found here.

The Duchess of Angouleme...entered into Paradise this date at Frohsdorf in Austria-Hungary in 1851.

Marie-Therese-Charlotte de France, Madame Royale, known after her marriage as the Duchesse d'Angouleme. May her Soul be at peace in busom of God and amongst her family.

It is unimaginable how she must have felt at the loss of her entire family snatched from her during her youth when her future seemed bright and full of hope. She never lost her Faith, never asked God why, and she accepted her cross and carried it with dignity in preparation for her own entrance into Heaven.

A short article about Madame la Duchesse in her later years may be found here by one more eloquent than I...

18.10.07

The Rationalists had rejected all belief in the Supernatural Life of Grace merited for us by Our Divine Lord on Calvary and communicated to the world through the Catholic Church. They had built up a new concept of human life and destiny directly opposed to Christian ideals. To put this new plan of life into action it was necessary that the Catholic Church and her power over men should be overthrown. To achieve this purpose a new satanic force appears in the world: the Secret Society known as Freemasonry, the parent and controlling authority of the lesser secret and semi-secret societies of modern times.

Origins of Freemasonry.- Freemasonry as we know it today seems to have had its beginning in a Lodge founded at London in 1717. From here it spread rapidly under English influence over Europe and the New World.

Organization of Freemasonry.- Freemasonry in its organization (as in other matters) apes the organization of the Catholic Church. It is built in a kind of hierarchy of degrees, each degree having its special symbolic ceremony of initiation or reception, the inner meaning of which is fully communicated only in the highest grades (Rose Croix or Rosicrucian, and Knights of Kadosch).

Purpose of Freemasonry.- Freemasonry claims to be nothing more than a society, the members of which are pledged to help one another in the name of the brotherhood of humanity; and many Masons, especially in the English-speaking world, are unaware of the society's real satanic purpose. That purpose is (i) to overthrow Christianity, with the political and social institutions that have Christianity for their basis or support (such as nationality, the family, private property, morality). (ii) Ultimately (as appears from the inner meaning of its symbols) to set up humanity in the place of God. Freemasonry rejects utterly the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Mystical Body the Catholic Church. As a consequence, it is ever striving to secure control of financial and State affairs, the Press, the Cinema and other influences, so that by wealth and power it may the more quickly transform society in accordance with its anti-Christian principles. We shall find, consequently, that the Masonic Lodges were the hatching-fields of most of the revolutionary societies that disturbed Europe in the nineteenth (and twentieth)century.

In FRANCE the Society of Jesus before the Revolution had many enemies. For (i) As defenders of Catholic truth its members had unveiled the deceit of Jansenism and fought that proud heresy uncompromisingly from the beginning. (ii) As upholders of the purity of private morals they had ruthlessly denounced the license of the French Court. (iii) As exponents of Catholic philosophy and science they were the natural enemies of the free-thinkers.

Consequently, after much scheming, the Society was suppressed by a law of the Parliament of Paris in 1762, the decree being confirmed by Louis XV in 1764. The Society's Colleges, which had done such noble service to France in staving off Protestantism and in advancing Catholic culture, wee confiscated and about 4,000 Fathers of the Society dispersed.

In PORTUGAL the suppression of the Society of Jesus was the work of the Count de Pombal, Secretary of State to Joseph Emmanuel I (1757-1777). Striving to build a greater Portugal, and fettered, as he thought, by the spiritual power of the church over its citizens, Pombal, much like Joseph II in Austria, planned to bring the Church in Portugal altogether under the control of the State. The Fathers of the Society of Jesus, traditional defenders of the Church's rights, stood in the way. A pretext was therefore seized to suppress them: their property was confiscated, the great University of Coimbra taken out of their hands and the Fathers were all banished from Portugal (1759). Eighteen years later (1777) Pombal was himself disgraced and the honour of the Portuguese Religious vindicated.

In SPAIN the suppression of the Society- Spain's own noblest gift to the Church- was as sudden as it was unjust. Charles III, being led to believe by his Minister dAranda that the Society of Jesus questioned the legitimacy of his title to the throne and was preparing a revolution in favour of another claimant, decreed the banishment of every member of the Society from Spain and its colonies. They were forbidden to return under pain of death and their property was confiscated. Finally in 1773 Pope Clement XIV, to preserve peace and to avoid greater evils, consented to suppress the Society of Jesus completely, without, however, passing any judgment regarding the accusations against it.

The suppression, far from bringing the peace for which the Sovereign Pontiff had hoped, was disastrous in its consequence:

It left the enemies of the Church exultant and emboldened to make more insolent demands. It meant the closing of the Jesuit Colleges which were the mainstay of Catholic education and scholarship the world over. It dealt what was virtually a deathblow to many flourishing missions built up by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus in Africa, America, India and Asia: thus in many places where the Church had made most promising beginnings the natives fell back into paganism. Above all, it deprived the Church of a valuable source of that spiritual power which is generated by the corporate life of every religious society- each according to its own distinctive tradition- and left many individual souls without the guidance of the learned and saintly priests who had directed them in the higher ways of holiness.

An Outline History of the Catholic Church by Rev. Reginald F. Walker CSSP

The pagan philosophy of Rationalism played a big part in shaping, not only the French Revolution, but the anti-Christian movement with which the Church is even now locked in deadly conflict, we may summarise Rousseaus position in the light of Catholic doctrine as follows: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Catholic Doctrine

Rousseau: Men are born good. It is contact with other men which makes them evil. Were man to live alone he would remain good. Catholic Doctrine: Man is born stained with Original Sin. It is through the ministration of the Sacraments by other men that he becomes good. Society is necessary for man to develop his natural and supernatural life and thus to fulfilthe purpose of his existence (cf encyclical Immortale Dei (Pope Leo XIII), p.73).

Rousseau: Men are born free they are everywhere chained down by society. Catholic Doctrine: Authority and true freedom are not in conflict. Freedom means not license to do what is wrong, but absense of constraint, whether from within oneself or from outside, in doing what is right, i.e. what is according to just laws. Authority is necessary for man since society is necessary, and society is impossible without authority.

Rousseau: All men are equal by nature, and therefore all should be equal in regard to the State. Catholic Doctrine: (i) All men are equal in that all come from the hand of the same Creator, all have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, and all will be judged, rewarded or punished by God according to the exact measure of their merits and demerits. (cf encyclical Quod Apostolici muneris (Pope Leo XIII), Dec. 28, 1878). (ii).Men are not equal in everything. Some, for example, are physically stronger than others or more intellectually gifted. God gives each one his special gifts, little or great, to be used for the common good of society so that princes and subjects, masters and men...united by a bond of love, may help one another to attain their final end in heaven, and their material and moral well-being on earth. (ibid.)

Rousseau: Society depends upon the Social Contract which is a pact concluded among themselves by men, who, being equal and free, may break it again if they think fit. Catholic Doctrine: God, not man, is the ultimate author of society; changes in the political form of the State must therefore be effected within Gods law.

Rousseau: Law is the expression of the General Will of the people and this is indicated by numbers. Catholic Doctrine: Law is an ordering of things, according to reason, for the common good, promulgated by him who has the care of the community (St. Thomas Aquinas). Rousseauist democracy makes a God of the People, makes might prevail over right, makes the votes of a hundred fools or villians prevail over those of fifty saints or men of genius.

Rousseau: The people are sovereign and authority lies in them. Catholic Doctrine: Authority comes from God as from its first origin and only goes through the people to dwell in the person or persons charged with the care of the common good.

Note.- THE ROOT OF ROUSSEAUS ERRORS. Rousseau detested logical order and reasoning. He aimed at basing truth not on the evidence that appeals to the intelligence but on the emotions of the heart. Hence his tendency to admire virtue without practising it- to feel that one loves God is everything for Rousseau; hence, too, the fact that he saw no contradiction in posing as an educator while abandoning his own children.

No wonder he gave free reign to the passionate revolt of fallen man against authority and order, and that he became the father of modern self-expression. The charm which so many have found in his writings is due to the fact that Rousseau was keenly sensitive to harmony and all that appeals to the senses. It is interesting to note, however, that a number of specialists are agreed that he was mentally abnormal. cf. La Folie de Jean Jacques Rousseau (1890) by Dr. Chatelain.

An Outline History of the Catholic Church by Rev. Reginald F. Walker CSSP

With the gradual growth of free thought the Lutheran principle of private judgment produced more and more ruinous results. The divine teaching authority of the Church was, of course, first rejected; then the divinity of Christ; then, as a consequence, the guidance of the Scriptures (no longer believed to be inspired), natural Reason was put in their place (whence the term Rationalism from Latin ratio= reason); last came the denial of the existence of God Himself. Thus, from ripples of scepticism towards the end of the seventeenth century (1650- 1700) a great wave of unbelief swept over Europe in the eighteenth, to crest and break in the utter atheism of the French Revolution (1789).

The Rationalist or Free-Thinking movement made its first appearance in England about the middle of the seveenth century (c. 1650). Some hundred years later it secured a great hold in Germany, particularly during the long reign of the irreligious Frederick II of Prussia (1740-1786). It came to a head in France towards the close of the eighteenth century. Headed by the infamous apostate Voltaire, a group of Rationalist writers brought out an Encyclopedia, which, pretending to be a summary of modern knowledge, carried, scattered through it, articles attacking Catholic beliefs and ideals with the weapons of scoffery and ridicule. Along with the work of another Rationalist philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Encyclopedia did much to undermin the faith in France and pave the way for the Revolution.

Voltaire was the most complete incarnation of the irreligious spirit of the eighteenth century. To the French corruption and frivolity he added the hateful fanaticism which he imbibed, while in England, from the deists of that country. After his return he was perhaps the most marvellous workman of destruction who has ever appeared. He was endowed with a mind unequalled in suppleness and vivacity, universally gifted as a writer, skilled in the infernal art of handling the poisonous weapon of sarcasm and irony; and, in the war to death which he had declared against Christianity, he employed all the resources of a mind exceptionally constituted for intellectual struggles and all the indefatigable activities of a satanic hatred against the Church. For almost a century, he led the irreligious campaign with astounding obstinacy and to use the expression of a great modern poet- he was the missionary of the devil among the men of his time. He is little read nowadays, because, notwithstanding his prodigious talent, his works were of his day; nevertheless his mind remains the wicked genius of the modern world, and, to the present day, the Christian cannot look upon his hideous likeness without feelings of fright and horror.

In ENGLAND the most noteworthy of the Rationalists were Lord Herbert of Cherbury (d. 1648), Hobbes (d. 1679), Locke (1632- 1704) and the Scottish philosopher Hume (1711 1776). The general tendency of English Rationalism was to deny the existence of any truths other than those established by the immediate experience of the senses: hence spiritual realities such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul were treated as purely subjective creations of the mind, devoid of any foundation in reality. There is no religion in England, wrote the French essayist Montesquieu in 1729; speak of religion and everyone begins to laugh.

In GERMANY the Rationalist movement had its centre in Prussia, where the spirit of unbelief found expression in a pagan literary and philosophical renaissance during the eighteenth century. The more outstanding among the German rationalists were the literateur Lessing (d. 1781), the philosopher Kant (d. 1804), whose work has practically dominated in the field of non-Catholic philosophy down to our time, his successor Fichte (d. 1814), the poet Goethe (d. 1832), whose disastrous influence was second only to that of Voltaire in France, and the literateur Schiller (d. 1805). German rationalism found a willing patron in the utterly irreligious Frederick II, who, by pushing Prussia to the forefront of Europe, gave the anti-Christian philosophers and poets a prestige which told heavily against the faith.

In FRANCE, the Churchs battle with Jansenism and Gallicanism and the preoccupation of theologians with the Grace problems, gave rationalism time to sens its roots deep down into soil already prepared by loose morality. The three principal contributors to the Encyclopedia (referred to above) were Voltaire (1694-1778), Diderot (1784) and dAlembert. While these writers and their colleagues contented themselves with making destructive mockery of the Christian philosophy of life, Jean-Jacques Rousseau worked constructively by proposing a pagan philosophy in its place.

An Outline History of the Catholic Church by Rev. Reginald F. Walker CSSP.

Against the great spiritual revival which took place in France during the seventeenth century (1650-1700), there ran a strong current of laxity. This tendency to looseness in religion and morals was strengthened : (i) by the bad example of the French court and (ii) by the fact that many confessors, striving to make the sacrament of penance easy for repentant sinners, had begun to stretch the bounds of tolerance further than the mind of the Church would warrant. How was this laxity to be corrected? The leaders of the Protestant revolt had tried to put an end to abuses in the Church by establishing a new Church. they had only succeeded in adding to the prevalent disorder. A group now rose up in France, however, who proposed to reform the Church in France from within, urging a return, as they said, to the strict discipline of early Christianity. They stressed the rigour of Gods justice, spoke little of His mercy, urged great severity in the sacrament of penance, and laid down such conditions for the worthy reception of Holy Communion as to make the Blessed Sacrament for most of the faithful almost unapproachable. The would-be rerormers soon fell into heresy regarding free will (which they denied) and divine grace. This heresy is known as Jansenism from the fact that its followers based their doctrine upon a treatise on St. augustine written by Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres (1585-1638), and published after his death in 1640. Although Jansenius died in the Church, his work was condemned by Pope Urban VIII in 1642 and by Pope Innocent X in 1653.

Jansenism found its greatest stronghold at Port Royal (near Paris) where a group of highly-gifted laymen (known as Solitaires) and nuns built up on their heretical doctrines a gloomy but very influential system of education. From Port Royal Jansenism soon spread over France, deceiving the noblest minds by its seemingly high spiritual appeal. Behind that appeal, however, lurked the demon of pride, rebellion and deceit: repeated condemnations from the Holy See were met by the Jansensits with subtle attempts to justify their position and evade the stigma of heresy. The final condemnation, which left no room for escape, cam in the Bull Unigenitus, published by Pope Clement XI in 1713. Gradually, after this date, Jansenism began to decline. Foremost among those who had fought it were the Society of Jesus, St. vincent de Paul, Cardinal Berulle and the great preacher Bossuet, while its influence- even on Catholic writers- was gradually softened by the teaching of St. Alphonsus Liguori and the later theologians.

For over a century, however, Jansenism continued to scourge the Church in France and elsewhere by its effects. It had defied the divine authority of the Holy See, encouraged free thinking, and prepared the way for the reign of unbelief. It had frightened the faithful from their greatest spiritual support, the Sacrament of Love, depopulated the Communion-rails, and raised a kind of barrier between souls and their Divine Saviour. It needed the personal revelations of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque to break down that barrier, which was cleared for ever from Catholic life by the Decrees on Holy Communion issued by Pope Pius X in 1905 and 1910.

Jansenism: Details

The heresy of Jansenism grew by four distinct phases:

(i)The Grace Controversy, Baius.- The Protestant Revolt, and in particular Calvinism, had occasioned widespread discussion among Catholic theologians of the many different problems involved in the question of Divine Grace and free will. The Dominican school following St. Thomas Aquinas interpretation of St. Augustine and St. Paul, stressed the part played by Divine Grace; the Franciscan school (whose tradition was carried forward by the Society of Jesus) stressed the role of free will. In the course of these discussions certain writings of Michael Baius, a professor of Louvain, were condemned by the Holy See in 1560. Baius happily retracted his errors; but the grace controversy went on, the two most notable figures being the Jesuit theologian Molina and the Dominican Bannez. For over nine years (1598-1607) a special Papal Commission (set up by Pope Clement VIII and closed by Pope Paul V) considered the conflicting views of the two schools. No judgment, however, was given, the two schools being simply forbidden to treat each other as heretics. The long discussion, though it had served to clarify to some extent the theological issues involved, was on the whole unfortunate: it absorbed much energy which might have been more profitably given to other things, and caused disunion in the Catholic camp at a time when unity was vitally necessary. (ii) Jansenius (d. 1638). In 1640 appeared Jansenius Augustinus, a work claiming to set forth and develop the teaching of St. Augustine especially regarding divine Grace. In 1642 the work was condemned by Pope Urban VIII as being tainted with Baianism: it was neverheless defended by the Solitaires of Port Royal-Antoine Arnauld, his sister angelique, Pascal, Nicole and St. Cyran (i.e. Jean de Verger de Hauranne, Abbe of St. Cyran).

The next condemnation came in 1653 in a Bull of Pope Innocent X (Cum Occasione) which censured five propositions from Jansenius Augustinus. The Jansenists replied by raising the question now known as the Dogmatic Fact: they agreed that the Holy See had the right to pronounce infallibly on the truth or falsehood of doctrine, but held that the Church might err on the historical fact whether the book of Jansenius contained the condemned propositions in the heretical sense attributed to them. Regarding this point, they contended, it would be sufficient for the faithful to receive the judgment of the Holy See with respectful silence, without submitting their interior judgment. The contention was answered by PopeAlexander VII (1656) in the Bull Ad Sacram which explained that the bull of Pope Innocent X had condemned the propositions in the natural sense of the author. The censure was renewed. A storm of opposition to the papal pronouncement, led by four French Bishops, was met by a still more vigorous condemnation (Apostolici Regiminis, 1664) which requested all ecclesiastics and religious to sign a formulary against Jansenism. Some, including the four French bishops, still held out, diplomatic difficulties between France and the Holy See adding to the disaffection. Peace, however, was temporarily restored by Pope Clement IX (The Clementine Peace) in 1667.

The Case of Conscience.- While the Pope had been deceived into believing they had made their submission, the Jansenists, on the contrary, still held obstinately to their contention regarding the Dogmatic Fact and the respectful silence. Following a discussion on the matter at the Sorbonne in 1701 (known as the Case of Conscience) they were therefore once again censured by Pope Clement XI in 1705 (Vineam Domini) but still held out. In 1709 (by which year St. Cyran, the Arnaulds and Nicole were all dead) the abbey of Port Royal was dissolved, and the nuns dispersed. In 1710, by order of King Louis XIV, the convent was razed to the ground. Quesnel (d. 1719).- Meanwhile Quesnel, a theologian of the Oratory of Cardinal Berulle, had published a work on Sacred Scripture tainted with Jansenism. Quesnel refused to sign the Profession of Faith of 1664 and had taken Arnaulds place as eader of the Jansenist movement. In 1713 his work was condemned in 101 propositions by Pope Clement XI (Unigenitus). This was virtually the death blow to the heresy which gradually lost hold on the French Clergy (excepting the Appellants who made a futile attempt from the Pope to a General Council). born in austere scholarship, the heresy died in fanaticism and superstition. Jansenist miracles were claimed at the tomb of the deacon Francis of Paris (d. 1727) in the cemetery of St. Medard, which became a place of pilgrimage for the sects last followers. Here tey affected extravagant ecstasies and revolting convulsions (whence their later name Convulsionaries) until the cemetery was closed by Louis XV in 1732.

The Jansenists survive as a rapidly diminishing schismatic sect in Holland: they are known as oud-Roomsch or Old Roman Catholics and numbered less than 8,000 at the end of the last [19th] century.

Note 1.- Our Divine Lords Answer to Jansenism: Devotion to the Sacred Heart.- Just as when the newly-born Church lay helpless under the yoke of the Caesars there appeared in the heavens a cross which heralded peace at last with victory, so towards the end of the seventeenth century Jesus vouchsafed a sign that He was with His Church in the struggle against Jansenism and that His Church should conquer.

Towards the year 1650 a French priest, St. John Eudes, began to propagate devotion to the Sacred Heart in France. At first the devotion was linked with devotions to the Holy Heart of Mary. Gradually, however, it began to take its own special form, and in 1670 the Feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated for the firs ttime in the Grand Seminary of Rennes. From here it gradually spread into other dioceses of France with the approbation of the local bishops. Gods principal instrument, however, in the establishment of Devotion to the Sacred Heart was a humble sisterof the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. in a series of apparitions to this saintly nun, Our Divine Lord made known to her the wonders of the love of His Sacred Heart, His desire that special honour should be paid to it, and the form that the devotion should take-frequent Communion, the reception of Holy Communion on the First Friday of the month, the Holy Hour. in the great apparition (probably 16th June, 1675, during the octave of Corpus Christi) Our Lord made known the spirit He desired to see in the devotion- a spirit of expiation and reparation for the forgetfulness and ingratitude of those who ignore or spurn His love.

Through St. Margaret Marys spiritual director, Blessed Claude de la Colombiere, S.J., the desires of Our Lord were made known to men and almost at once, in spite of the attacks of the Jansenists, Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus began its progress through the Catholic world. One of the first places where it was preached, it is interesting to note, was at the court of St. James, London, where Father de la Colombiere spent some time as chaplain to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York. Pope Benedict XIV attached indulgences to the Devotion, and in 1765 Pope Clement XIII permitted the celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart in Poland. In response to numerous appeals to the Holy See for the same privilege, Pope Pius IX in 1856 extended the Feast to the Universal Church. The whole world was, finally, consecrated to the Sacred Heart by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 (11th June).

Devotion to the Sacred Heart was no new thing in the history of the Church. It was, however, revealed to St. Gertrude by St. John that the fuller and clearer revelation of the riches of that Most Sacred Heart in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. ii. 3), would be reserved to the days when the charity of men should begin to grow cold. And so it happened.

Thus the timely revelation of Devotion to the Sacred Heart at the critical moment when heresy, under the cloak of righteousness, sought to steal the love of Jesus out of the hearts of men, gives a beautiful insight into the life of the Church. Our Lord advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men (Luke ii. 52) by manifesting outwardly in a gradual way the perfection which was in Him from the beginning. So too the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, held the divine message in its completeness from the beginning; only gradually, however, as age succeeds age, does she manifest her glories, according to the particular needs of the time and the breating od the Holy Spirit. The revelations of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary came just at the time when the Church needed them most urgently.

Note 2.- Quietism.- A second heresy of this time, a form of reaction against Jansenism, less widespread in its influence but resembling the greater heresy in the way it deceived great minds, was Quietism. This error would have perfection to consist in a state of passive response or quiet on the part of the soul under the action of divine grace. External observances and good works, confession even, and the spirit of healthy fear in the face of temptation, were discouraged. Quietism, however, never became a great heresy and happily soon died out. The three foremost leaders in the Quietist heresy were Molinos (1627-1696), a Spanish priest who was condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1687, retracted and died repentant; Madame Guyon (1648-1717), and Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai and, with the exception of Bossuet, the most brilliant Churchman in France. When his works Maxims of the Saints on the Interior Life was condemned by Pope Innocent XII (1699), Fenelon made a complete and edifying submission.

Note 3. The Dogmatic Fact.- The most important dogmatic consequence of the struggle with Jansenism was to clear up the principle that the churchs supreme teaching authority applies not only to questions of law (whether or not a given doctrine is heretical) but also to questions of fact (whether or not a given doctrine is to be found in an authors words taken in their obvious sense). The tradition of the Church had always presupposed this power, but Popes Alexander VII and Clement XI left no room for doubt in the matter. Of what avail would the Churchs infallibility be if she were liable to error in interpreting the natural sense of books and propositions submitted to her and so of mistaking truth for error, error for truth?

An Outline History of the Catholic Church by Rev. Reginald F. Walker CSSP.

The term Regalist is applied in general to those princes of the eighteenth century who tried to gain control of the Church within their kingdoms and fetter her liberty. The attempt as made in France is known as Gallicanism, as made in Germany it is termed Febronianism and Josephism, in Italy Leopoldism.

FRANCE: GALLICANISM

Gallicanism might be described in a general way as a movement which tried to nationalise the Church in France and to make it independent of the Holy See. This movement sprang from two distinct sources, both of ancient growth:

From the time of the Council of Constance (1417) a certain number of the French clergy had shown signs of being more attached to their king and country than to the Holy See. For a still longer time back the State had soought to control ecclesiastical affairs. This peril to the Church is as old as the Church itself. But it developed with particular strenght in France, as we saw, under the influence of Roman Law during and following the reign of Philip the Fair at the end of the Central Middle Ages (c. 1312).

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the attempt of the French monarchy to dictate tothe Church, and the unfortunate willingness of some of the French clergy to submit, came to a head. King Louis XIV was unjustly seizing the revenues of episcopal sees. his action was challenged by Pope Innocent XI and a long controversy ensued, in which the King was supported by a strong following of court ecclesiastics. Finally, in 1682, Louis called a General Assembly of the Frencg clergy which passed a Declaration known as the Four Gallican Articles challenging the Popes supreme power and attempting to withdraw France from his authority. The articles stated:

That kings and princes in temporal things are subject to no ecclesiastical power. That the decrees of the Council of Constance (sessions 4 and 5) are to be upheld- i.e. that the Pope is inferior to a General Council. That the exercise of Papal authority should be controlled by the Canons (of Church law). That the decisions of the Pope are not final without the consent of the Church. These articles were immediately condemned by Pope Innocent XI who was strongly supported by many of the French clergy (notably Fenelon, the articles were defended by Bossuet). The Pope, moreover, firmly refused to confirm the appointment of any prelate in favour of them. King Louis XIV replied by acts of force. Whereupon the Sovereign Pontiff placed France under interdict. For a moment the kingdom of Louis seemed to tremble on the brink of schism. Her political position was, however, in danger (the Grand Alliance of European powers was formed against Louis XIV in 1689), and in 1692, after a second condemnation of the Articles by Pope Alexander VIII, the King made peace with the Holy See and the Articles were withdrawn. They were more than once revived by Louis successors, however, causing difficulties between France and the Holy See. A still graver consequence of the Gallican Articles was that their spirit lived on in a certain element of the French clergy, and that this spirit, coupled with that of Jansenism, contributed not a little (as we shall see) to the French Revolution.

GERMANY: Febronianism and Josephism

The spirit of revolt against the divinely-given authority of the Holy See subsided in France only to appear in another guise under another sky. In the year 1763 an author calling himself Febronius published a work which was a direct attack on the Primacy of the Sovereign Pontiff and on Catholic doctrine regarding Church and State. Although this author, when condemned by the Holy See, retracted his errors and died in peace with the Church in 1790, his views were adopted by the emperor Joseph II (1765-1790), who did his utmost to put them into practise. The Emperor (while still claiming to be a Catholic) strove to withdraw the obedience of the Austrian bishops from the Sovereign Pontiff and to secure complete control of ecclesiastical affairs within his realm. To protect the rights of the Church and safeguard the interests of souls Pope Pius VI journeyed in person to Vienna (1782) where he was accorded a brilliant but insincere welcome by the Emperor. The Pope returned to Rome without having achieved the purpose of his visit. Nevertheless the majority of the German bishops were faithful and the Emperor Josephs plans to rule the church in austria broke down.

In 1786, the establishment of a Papal Nunciature at Munich led the Prince-Archbishops of Cologne, Mayence, Treves and Salzburg (all tainted with Febronianism) to issue at the Congress of Ems a series of anti-papal decrees known as the Punctation. The greater number of the German bishops showed their loyalty to the Sovereign Pontiff by rejecting the decrees and the threatened schism came to nothing. The Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a self-confessed failure.

ITALY (TUSCANY) : Leopoldism

In Italy an exactly similar movement was taking place, guide by Josephs brother Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1765-1790). The bishops of Italy, however, were loyal to the Pope, and Leopolds efforts had no lasting effect.

In 1786 at the Synod of Pistoia convened by Bishop Ricci of the See, under the influence of Leopold, a series of decrees were drawn up opposed to the rights of the Sovereign Pontiff and to Catholic practise. The acts of the synod of Pistoia were condemned by pope Pius VI (1794) in the Bull Auctorem fidei. The Italian Hierarchy, with but one dissentient, stood loyally by the Sovereign Pontiff and in 1805, in the pontificate of Pius VII, Ricci retracted his errors. (Note.- We shall see later that the synod of Pistoia holds an important position in the history of Jansenism.)

An Outline History of the Catholic Church by Rev. Reginald F. Walker CSSP. (Gill & Son (Dublin) 1939).

To understand the forces which attacked (and by who) the Monarchy in France we must return to history before the revolution.

The so-called Reformers attacked the Church in her dogma and discipline and despoiled her, as far as lay in their power, of her earthly goods. Their attack was met by the great Catholic revival known as the Counter-Reformation. But the revolt had come to stay. It had challenged the supremacy of the Church in the religious world: its next task was to attempt to overthrow the social order, the manner of living of men, which was the fruit of the Churchs patient action on society for seventeen hundred years and which still had its roots firmly fixed in the great Catholic past. This attempt was begun in the French Revolution, the great upheaval which was simply the working out, in political and social life, of the false idea of individual liberty behind the Renaissance and the Lutheran revolt.

The French Revolution did not happen suddenly, no more than did the Protestant Revolt. The way was prepared for it by three hostile movements which absorbed the energies of the Church and left her ill-prepared to face the storm. The first was the Regalist movement. This, as its name shows, was just one more attempt on the part of the kings and princes of Europe to secure control of the Church- to tie the Kingdom of God down to earth and make it work for earthly and national interests instead of the eternal welfare of souls. This was a peril from without. Within the bosom of the Church another terrible menace arose- the Jansenist heresy- and joined forces with the Regalists attacking form outside. From both evils, the Church, by the Divine power that is given to her at such times, wrenched herself free. But the faith of Europe had been weakened. The enemies of the name of Christ, grown in number and in strength, were scoffing at the very idea of revelation and asserting that the human reason was supreme: whence the third movement, known as Rationalism, which, working through Freemasonry, inspired the French Revolution.

An Outline History of the Catholic Church by Rev. Reginald F. Walker CSSP

Religious of the Visitation Order. Apostle of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, born at Lhautecour, France, 22 July, 1647; died at Paray-le-Monial, 17 October, 1690.

Her parents, Claude Alacoque and Philiberte Lamyn, were distinguished less for temporal possessions than for their virtue, which gave them an honourable position. From early childhood Margaret showed intense love for the Blessed Sacrament, and preferred silence and prayer to childish amusements. After her first communion at the age of nine, she practised in secret severe corporal mortifications, until paralysis confined her to bed for four years. At the end of this period, having made a vow to the Blessed Virgin to consecrate herself to religious life, she was instantly restored to perfect health. The death of her father and the injustice of a relative plunged the family in poverty and humiliation, after which more than ever Margaret found consolation in the Blessed Sacrament, and Christ made her sensible of His presence and protection. He usually appeared to her as the Crucified or the Ecce Homo, and this did not surprise her, as she thought others had the same Divine assistance. When Margaret was seventeen, the family property was recovered, and her mother besought her to establish herself in the world. Her filial tenderness made her believe that the vow of childhood was not binding, and that she could serve God at home by penance and charity to the poor. Then, still bleeding from her self-imposed austerities, she began to take part in the pleasures of the world. One night upon her return from a ball, she had a vision of Christ as He was during the scourging, reproaching her for infidelity after He had given her so many proofs of His love. During her entire life Margaret mourned over two faults committed at this time--the wearing of some superfluous ornaments and a mask at the carnival to please her brothers.

On 25 May, 1671, she entered the Visitation Convent at Paray, where she was subjected to many trials to prove her vocation, and in November, 1672, pronounced her final vows. She had a delicate constitution, but was gifted with intelligence and good judgement, and in the cloister she chose for herself what was most repugnant to her nature, making her life one of inconceivable sufferings, which were often relieved or instantly cured by our Lord, Who acted as her Director, appeared to her frequently and conversed with her, confiding to her the mission to establish the devotion to His Sacred Heart. These extraordinary occurrences drew upon her the adverse criticism of the community, who treated her as a visionary, and her superior commanded her to live the common life. But her obedience, her humility, and invariable charity towards those who persecuted her, finally prevailed, and her mission, accomplished in the crucible of suffering, was recognized even by those who had shown her the most bitter opposition.

Margaret Mary was inspired by Christ to establish the Holy Hour and to pray lying prostrate with her face to the ground from eleven till midnight on the eve of the first Friday of each month, to share in the mortal sadness He endured when abandoned by His Apostles in His Agony, and to receive holy Communion on the first Friday of every month. In the first great revelation, He made known to her His ardent desire to be loved by men and His design of manifesting His Heart with all Its treasures of love and mercy, of sanctification and salvation. He appointed the Friday after the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi as the feast of the Sacred Heart; He called her "the Beloved Disciple of the Sacred Heart", and the heiress of all Its treasures. The love of the Sacred Heart was the fire which consumed her, and devotion to the Sacred Heart is the refrain of all her writings. In her last illness she refused all alleviation, repeating frequently: "What have I in heaven and what do I desire on earth, but Thee alone, O my God", and died pronouncing the Holy Name of Jesus.

The discussion of the mission and virtues of Margaret Mary continued for years. All her actions, her revelations, her spiritual maxims, her teachings regarding the devotion to the Sacred Heart, of which she was the chief exponent as well as the apostle, were subjected to the most severe and minute examination, and finally the Sacred Congregation of rites passed a favourable vote on the heroic virtues of this servant of God. In March, 1824, Leo XII pronounced her Venerable, and on 18 September, 1864, Pius IX declared her Blessed. When her tomb was canonically opened in July, 1830, two instantaneous cures took place. Her body rests under the altar in the chapel at Paray, and many striking favours have been obtained by pilgrims attracted thither from all parts of the world. Her feast is celebrated on 17 October. St. Margaret Mary was canonized by Benedict XV in 1920.

The prayers of the feast of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque are found here...

16.10.07

My most recently read books are Trianon, and Madame Royale. I have added them to my collection of works which are at my elbow. Here Marian T Horvat, presents us a review of Trianon. These books are not for the faint hearted, nor are they for those who would wish to believe what they were indoctinated with in High School. While I was a confirmed monarchist long before I read this collection, I confirmed my leaning within the confines of these books. I will let Dr Horvat say more about Trianon. I can only say Elena Maria Vidal has brought forth the period, as well as the characters and made them live. I suppose that is the benefit of the historical novel. These were real people with real lives, who perservered even in catastrophe. These volumes are learning tools for the severly secularly educated. Madame Royale is the first historical novel I have ever read with a bibliography.

Unmasking the Formidable Mythabout Queen Marie Antoinette

Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.

Book-review on the work Trianon, A Novel of Royal France by Elena Maria VidalLong Prairie, MN: The Neumann Press, 2000, hardcover, 205 pp.

...A book was needed that would underscore Marie-Antoinette’s admirable qualities, so that the young people of the future would not imbibe the same prejudices against the French Monarchy swallowed unthinkingly by the generations before them.

A Book that Breaks the Myth

Recently I came across such a book that certainly will begin to fill this lacuna. Trianon is a short but compelling piece of historical fiction written by Elena Marie Vidal. In her preface, the author tells the readers that this is the story “of the martyred King Louis XVI and his Queen.

The fruit of years of research, the book attempts to correct many of the popular misconceptions of the royal couple, which secular and modern historians have tried so hard to promote. Louis and Antoinette can only be truly understood in view of the Catholic teachings to which they adhered and within the context of the Sacrament of Matrimony. It was the graces of this sacramental life that gave them the strength to remain loyal to the Church, and to each other, in the face of crushing disappointments, innumerable humiliations, personal and national tragedy, and death itself.”

Author Elena Vidal made use of a charming device to tell the true story. Each chapter is viewed through the eyes of one of the key players in the life of the Royal Family, e.g.: Madame Louise, the Carmelite aunt of King Louis XVI who counseled the King to dedicate France to the Sacred Heart; the King’s saintly youngest sister, Madame Elizabeth of France, who wanted to enter Carmel but remained at Court at her brother’s request to exert her good influence on the Queen and court; the Irish confessor of the King, Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, who was privileged to witness Louis XVI’s last moments. It was his voice that cried out after the blade fell: “Ascend to heaven, son of St. Louis!” Rosalie, the young maid who served the Queen faithfully in her last days and reported the great courage and fidelity to the Faith of Marie-Antoinette: her refusal to accept confession from the revolutionary priest who had sworn the oath of the Civil Constitution, her calm and assured bearing to the end., when she was driven to her execution in an oxcart in the same manner of common criminals.

Finally, the author enters boldly into even the minds and imaginations of the King and Queen, whose human defects and frailties were purified, as gold by fire, by the humiliations and great trials they suffered at the hands of the revolutionaries. By the time of his trial and execution, King Louis XVI, a man who himself admitted he was scourged with weakness and irresolution, had assumed firm and courageous attitudes....more here...

L'ABBÉ EDGEWORTH DE FIRMONT was confessor of Louis XVI, and vicar-general of the Diocese of Paris at the height of the French Revolution. His father, the Rev. Robert Edgeworth, Protestant rector of Edgeworthstown, or Mostrim, was a first cousin to Richard Lowell Edgeworth, the father of Maria Edgeworth, the novelist; and his mother was a granddaughter of the Protestant Archbishop Ussher. The Rev. Robert Edgeworth owned an estate at Firmount, or Fairy-mount, a few miles distant from Edgeworthstown, where the elder branch of the Edgeworth family resided. The Edgeworths were of English descent, and went to Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth. The title, "Edgeworth de Firmont", by which the abbé was universally known in France, was derived from Firmount, the ancestral patrimony of his family. The vicarage house at Edgeworthstown where he passed his childhood is believed to be the same in which Oliver Goldsmith went to school to the Rev. Patrick Hughes. The Rev. Robert Edgeworth through conscientious motives resigned his living, embraced the Catholic religion, and, finding life at home intolerable under the penal laws, with his family (all of whom became Catholics) removed to Toulouse in France, where Henry Essex, then four years of age, received his early training for the ecclesiastical state. Subsequently he went to the seminary of Trente-Trois, Paris, at the suggestion of Bishop Moylan of Cork (at one time a curé in Paris). After a course of theology at the Sorbonne, Henry Essex Edgeworth was ordained priest and the capital of France became the theatre of his apostolic labours. The Irish bishops offered him a mitre in Ireland, an honour which he declined with his usual humility. On the removal of her confessor, Madame Elisabeth, sister of the ill-fated Louis XVI, requested the superior of Les Missions Etrangeres, where the abbé resided, to recommend her another and he unhesitatingly selected the Abbé Edgeworth. The Archbishop of Paris approved of the choice, and introduced him at court. Thus he became known to the royal family as a devoted friend. In their fallen fortunes he stood by them at the risk of his life, followed the survivors after the Revolution into exile, and died in their service.

When the Archbishop of Paris was obliged to fly in 1792 in order to save his life, he vested the Abbé Edgeworth with all his powers, making him his grand vicaire, and committed the great diocese to his care. In answer to the urgent entreaties of his friends to seek safety in Ireland or England, at this time, the abbé replied: "Almighty God has baffled my measures, and ties me to this land of horrors by chains I have not the liberty to shake off. The case is this: the wretched master [the king] charges me not to quit this country, as I am the priest whom he intends to prepare him for death. And should the iniquity of the nation commit this last act of cruelty, I must also prepare myself for death, as I am convinced the popular rage will not allow me to survive an hour after the tragic scene; but I am resigned. Could my life save him I would willingly lay it down, and I should not die in vain" (Letter to Mr. Maffey, priest in London).

At last, on the 20th of January, 1793, he was summoned by the Executive Council to proceed to the Temple prison at the desire of "Louis Capet", who was condemned to die on the following day. The abbé, having remained in the Temple all night, said Mass in the king's apartment on the morning of the execution, sat beside him in the carriage on the way to the scaffold, and, when the axe of the guillotine was about to fall, consoled his beloved master with the noble words: "Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven." In his graphic and authoritative account of the last moments of Louis XVI (the original of which in French is preserved in the British Museum) the abbé is silent about this fine apostrophe, which everyone has heard of; but, when asked if he made use of the memorable expression, he replied that, having no recollection of anything that happened to himself at that awful moment, he neither affirmed nor denied having used the words. He was allowed to leave the scene of the execution unmolested, and so escaped; but soon after his head was demanded in several clubs, so that he was obliged to quit Paris and take refuge at Bayeux, whence at that time he might easily have escaped to England. Three chief considerations, however, bound him to the land of horrors. He had a great diocese committed to his care; he had promised Madame Elisabeth, then in prison, never to desert her, and he could not abandon his mother and sister, still living in Paris. Dressed as an ordinary citizen, and passing under the name now of Essex, now of Edgeworth, and again of Henry, he eluded capture and the guillotine, until finally in August, 1796, after the death of his mother, and the execution of Madame Elisabeth, he escaped to Portsmouth, and proceeded to London.

Mr. Pitt offered to settle a pension for life on him, but he respectfully declined it. During the three months he spent in London he was lionized by fashionable society. His brother, Ussher, who resided at Firmount, and his relatives at Edgeworthstown, proud of his fame and renown, were most anxious to see him in Ireland; and, in fact, he was on the point of revisiting the land of his birth when he was entrusted with confidential despatches for Louis XVIII, then at Blankenburg. This changed all his plans. At the earnest entreaty of the exiled king he resolved to remain with him as his chaplain, going afterwards with the royal family to Mittau in Russia, where he spent the remainder of his days, revered and honoured by all with whom he came in contact. The Emperor Paul settled a pension of 500 roubles per annum on him. When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1807 it happened that some French soldiers were taken prisoners, and sent to Mittau. A contagious fever broke out among them, and in attending to their spiritual wants Abbé Edgeworth, never of a robust constitution, fell a victim to the plague. The daughter of Louis XVI Madame Royale, despite the manifest danger of contagion, attended night and day at the sick bed of her "beloved and revered invalid, her more than friend, who had left kindred and country for her family", to use her own words. He was interred at Mittau. Louis XVIII wrote his epitaph, a copy of which, together with a letter of condolence, was sent by Louis' orders to Mr. Ussher Edgeworth, the abbé's brother, residing in Ireland.

"Then came Peter unto him and said: Lord, how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus saith to him: I say not to thee, till seven times; but till seventy times seven times." Matt 18; 21-22, Douay-Rheims Bible

As Jesus forgave from the Cross we as Christians as a fundimental part of our faith are instruced to forgive our enemies, Elena Maria Vidal's post shows this clearly in far fewer words than I...

...Marie-Antoinette's forgiveness has an especially supernatural aura. When the queen wrote her last letter to her sister-in-law, she was hours away from death. She had been put through the ordeal of a humiliating trial, designed to break her will. Her little son had been dragged from her arms and tormented into accusing his own mother of unnatural crimes. That Marie-Antoinette was able to forgive the monsters who had tried to destroy her by corrupting her little boy surely required a special grace from God. Here are her words:

I beg pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evils that they have done me...

The Queen was bone tired. She was led across the courtyard of the Palais de Justice to the Conciergerie and her damp, moldy cell. Yet in that hopeless place she had received much spiritual consolation. Two of her guards were devout Catholics, and earlier in the fall had permitted the holy, non-juring priest Abbé Magnin to twice hear her confession, and even once say Mass in her cell. She had been able to receive Holy Communion for the first time in more than a year. "Now you will have the strength to endure your torments," the Abbé said to her. The guards assisted at Mass with her. Two nights before the trial began, another non-juring priest secretly brought her Holy Communion. She knew it was her Viaticum....~from Trianon by Elena Maria Vidal, Chapter Seven "The Sacrifice"

...Conveyed back to the Conciergerie, she there passed in tolerable composure the night preceding her execution, and, on the morning of the following day, the 16th of October, she was conducted, amidst a great concourse of the populace, to the fatal spot where, ten months before, Louis XVI. had perished.

[The Queen, after having written and prayed, slept soundly for some hours. On her waking, Bault's daughter dressed her and adjusted her hair with more neatness than on other days. Marie Antoinette wore a white gown, a white handkerchief covered her shoulders, a white cap her hair; a black ribbon bound this cap round her temples .... The cries, the looks, the laughter, the jests of the people overwhelmed her with humiliation; her colour, changing continually from purple to paleness, betrayed her agitation .... On reaching the scaffold she inadvertently trod on the executioner's foot. "Pardon me," she said, courteously. She knelt for an instant and uttered a half-audible prayer; then rising and glancing towards the towers of the Temple, "Adieu, once again, my children," she said; "I go to rejoin your father."—LAMARTINE.]

She listened with calmness to the exhortations of the ecclesiastic who accompanied her, and cast an indifferent look at the people who had so often applauded her beauty and her grace, and who now as warmly applauded her execution. On reaching the foot of the scaffold she perceived the Tuileries, and appeared to be moved; but she hastened to ascend the fatal ladder, and gave herself up with courage to the executioner.

[Sorrow had blanched the Queen's once beautiful hair; but her features and air still commanded the admiration of all who beheld her; her cheeks, pale and emaciated, were occasionally tinged with a vivid colour at the mention of those she had lost. When led out to execution, she was dressed in white; she had cut off her hair with her own hands. Placed in a tumbrel, with her arms tied behind her, she was taken by a circuitous route to the Place de la Revolution, and she ascended the scaffold with a firm and dignified step, as if she had been about to take her place on a throne by the side of her husband.—LACRETELLE.]

The infamous wretch exhibited her head to the people, as he was accustomed to do when he had sacrificed an illustrious victim.

"I have just been condemned, not to a shameful death, which can only apply to felons, but rather to finding your brother again...I seek forgiveness for all whom I know for every harm I may have unwittingly caused them...Adieu, good, gentle sister...I embrace you with all my heart as well as the poor, dear children."-Marie Antoinette

...Marie Antoinette had been separated from her sister, her daughter, and her Son, by virtue of a decree which ordered the trial and exile of the last members of the family of the Bourbons. She had been removed to the Conciergerie, and there, alone in a narrow prison, she was reduced to what was strictly necessary, like the other prisoners. The imprudence of a devoted friend had rendered her situation still more irksome. Michonnis, a member of the municipality, in whom she had excited a warm interest, was desirous of introducing to her a person who, he said, wished to see her out of curiosity. This man, a courageous emigrant, threw to her a carnation, in which was enclosed a slip of very fine paper with these words: "Your friends are ready,"—false hope, and equally dangerous for her who received it, and for him who gave it! Michonnis and the emigrant were detected and forthwith apprehended; and the vigilance exercised in regard to the unfortunate prisoner became from that day more rigorous than ever.

[The Queen was lodged in a room called the council chamber, which was considered as the moat unwholesome apartment in the Conciergerie on account of its dampness and the bad smells by which it was continually affected. Under pretence of giving her a person to wait upon her they placed near her a spy,—a man of a horrible countenance and hollow, sepulchral voice. This wretch, whose name was Barassin, was a robber and murderer by profession. Such was the chosen attendant on the Queen of France! A few days before her trial this wretch was removed and a gendarme placed in her chamber, who watched over her night and day, and from whom she was not separated, even when in bed, but by a ragged curtain. In this melancholy abode Marie Antoinette had no other dress than an old black gown, stockings with holes, which she was forced to mend every day; and she was entirely destitute of shoes.—DU BROCA.]

Gendarmes were to mount guard incessantly at the door of her prison, and they were expressly forbidden to answer anything that she might say to them.

That wretch Hebert, the deputy of Chaumette, and editor of the disgusting paper Pere Duchesne, a writer of the party of which Vincent, Ronsin, Varlet, and Leclerc were the leaders—Hebert had made it his particular business to torment the unfortunate remnant of the dethroned family. He asserted that the family of the tyrant ought not to be better treated than any sans-culotte family; and he had caused a resolution to be passed by which the sort of luxury in which the prisoners in the Temple were maintained was to be suppressed. They were no longer to be allowed either poultry or pastry; they were reduced to one sort of aliment for breakfast, and to soup or broth and a single dish for dinner, to two dishes for supper, and half a bottle of wine apiece. Tallow candles were to be furnished instead of wag, pewter instead of silver plate, and delft ware instead of porcelain. The wood and water carriers alone were permitted to enter their room, and that only accompanied by two commissioners. Their food was to be introduced to them by means of a turning box. The numerous establishment was reduced to a cook and an assistant, two men-servants, and a woman-servant to attend to the linen.

As soon as this resolution was passed, Hebert had repaired to the Temple and inhumanly taken away from the unfortunate prisoners even the most trifling articles to which they attached a high value. Eighty Louis which Madame Elisabeth had in reserve, and which she had received from Madame de Lamballe, were also taken away. No one is more dangerous, more cruel, than the man without acquirements, without education, clothed with a recent authority. If, above all, he possess a base nature, if, like Hebert, who was check-taker at the door of a theatre, and embezzled money out of the receipts, he be destitute of natural morality, and if he leap all at once from the mud of his condition into power, he is as mean as he is atrocious. Such was Hebert in his conduct at the Temple. He did not confine himself to the annoyances which we have mentioned. He and some others conceived the idea of separating the young Prince from his aunt and sister. A shoemaker named Simon and his wife were the instructors to whom it was deemed right to consign him for the purpose of giving him a sans-cullotte education. Simon and his wife were shut up in the Temple, and, becoming prisoners with the unfortunate child, were directed to bring him up in their own way. Their food was better than that of the Princesses, and they shared the table of the municipal commissioners who were on duty. Simon was permitted to go down, accompanied by two commissioners, to the court of the Temple, for the purpose of giving the Dauphin a little exercise.

Hebert conceived the infamous idea of wringing from this boy revelations to criminate his unhappy mother. Whether this wretch imputed to the child false revelations, or abused his, tender age and his condition to extort from him what admissions soever he pleased, he obtained a revolting deposition; and as the youth of the Prince did not admit of his being brought before the tribunal, Hebert appeared and detailed the infamous particulars which he had himself either dictated or invented.

It was on the 14th of October that Marie Antoinette appeared before her judges. Dragged before the sanguinary tribunal by inexorable revolutionary vengeance, she appeared there without any chance of acquittal, for it was not to obtain her acquittal that the Jacobins had brought her before it. It was necessary, however, to make some charges. Fouquier therefore collected the rumours current among the populace ever since the arrival of the Princess in France, and, in the act of accusation, he charged her with having plundered the exchequer, first for her pleasures, and afterwards in order to transmit money to her brother, the Emperor. He insisted on the scenes of the 5th and 6th of October, and on the dinners of the Life Guards, alleging that she had at that period framed a plot, which obliged the people to go to Versailles to frustrate it. He afterwards accused her of having governed her husband, interfered in the choice of ministers, conducted the intrigues with the deputies gained by the Court, prepared the journey to Varennes, provoked the war, and transmitted to the enemy's generals all our plans of campaign. He further accused her of having prepared a new conspiracy on the 10th of August, of having on that day caused the people to be fired upon, having induced her husband to defend himself by taxing him with cowardice; lastly, of having never ceased to plot and correspond with foreigners since her captivity in the Temple, and of having there treated her young son as King. We here observe how, on the terrible day of long-deferred vengeance, when subjects at length break forth and strike such of their princes as have not deserved the blow, everything is distorted and converted into crime. We see how the profusion and fondness for pleasure, so natural to a young princess, how her attachment to her native country, her influence over her husband, her regrets, always more indiscreet in a woman than a man, nay, even her bolder courage, appeared to their inflamed or malignant imaginations.

It was necessary to produce witnesses. Lecointre, deputy of Versailles, who had seen what had passed on the 5th and 6th of October, Hebert, who had frequently visited the Temple, various clerks in the ministerial offices, and several domestic servants of the old Court were summoned.. Admiral d'Estaing, formerly commandant of the guard of Versailles; Manuel, the ex-procureur of the Commune; Latour-du-Pin, minister of war in 1789; the venerable Bailly, who, it was said, had been, with La Fayette, an accomplice in the journey to Varennes; lastly, Valaze one of the Girondists destined to the scaffold, were taken from their prisons and compelled to give evidence.

No precise fact was elicited. Some had seen the Queen in high spirits when the Life Guards testified their attachment; others had seen her vexed and dejected while being conducted to Paris, or brought back from Varennes; these had been present at splendid festivities which must have cost enormous sums; those had heard it said in the ministerial offices that the Queen was adverse to the sanction of the decrees. An ancient waiting-woman of the Queen had heard the Duc de Coigny say, in 1788, that the Emperor had already received two hundred millions from France to make war upon the Turks.

The cynical Hebert, being brought before the unfortunate Queen, dared at length to prefer the charges wrung from the young Prince. He said that Charles Capet had given Simon an account of the journey to Varennes, and mentioned La Fayette and Bailly as having cooperated in it. He then added that this boy was addicted to odious and very premature vices for his age; that he had been surprised by Simon, who, on questioning him, learned that he derived from his mother the vices in which he indulged. Hebert said that it was no doubt the intention of Marie Antoinette, by weakening thus, early the physical constitution of her son, to secure to herself the means of ruling him in case he should ever ascend the throne. The rumours which had been whispered for twenty years by a malicious Court had given the people a most unfavourable opinion of the morals of the Queen. That audience, however, though wholly Jacobin, was disgusted at the accusations of Hebert.

[Can there be a more infernal invention than that made against the. Queen by Hdbert,—namely, that she had had an improper intimacy with her own son? He made use of this sublime idea of which he boasted in order to prejudice the women against the Queen, and to prevent her execution from exciting pity. It had, however, no other effect than that of disgusting all parties.—PRUDHOMME.]

He nevertheless persisted in supporting them.

[Hebert did not long survive her in whose sufferings he had taken such an infamous part. He was executed on 26th March, 1794.]

The unhappy mother made no reply. Urged a new to explain herself, she said, with extraordinary emotion, "I thought that human nature would excuse me from answering such an imputation, but I appeal from it to the heart of every mother here present." This noble and simple reply affected all who heard it.

In the depositions of the witnesses, however, all was not so bitter for Marie Antoinette. The brave D'Estaing, whose enemy she had been, would not say anything to inculpate her, and spoke only of the courage which she had shown on the 5th and 6th of October, and of the noble resolution which she had expressed, to die beside her husband rather than fly. Manuel, in spite of his enmity to the Court during the time of the Legislative Assembly, declared that he could not say anything against the accused. When the venerable Bailly was brought forward, who formerly so often predicted to the Court the calamities which its imprudence must produce, he appeared painfully affected; and when he was asked if he knew the wife of Capet, "Yes," said he, bowing respectfully, "I have known Madame." He declared that he knew nothing, and maintained that the declarations extorted from the young Prince relative to the journey to Varennes were false. In recompense for his deposition he was assailed with outrageous reproaches, from which he might judge what fate would soon be awarded to himself.

In all the evidence there appeared but two serious facts, attested by Latour-du-Pin and Valaze, who deposed to them because they could not help it. Latour-du-Pin declared that Marie Antoinette had applied to him for an accurate statement of the armies while he was minister of war. Valaze, always cold, but respectful towards misfortune, would not say anything to criminate the accused; yet he could not help declaring that, as a member of the commission of twenty-four, being charged with his colleagues to examine the papers found at the house of Septeuil, treasurer of the civil list, he had seen bonds for various sums signed Antoinette, which was very natural; but he added that he had also seen a letter in which the minister requested the King to transmit to the Queen the copy of the plan of campaign which he had in his hands. The most unfavourable construction was immediately put upon these two facts, the application for a statement of the armies, and the communication of the plan of campaign; and it was concluded that they could not be wanted for any other purpose than to be sent to the enemy, for it was not supposed that a young princess should turn her attention, merely for her own satisfaction, to matters of administration and military, plans. After these depositions, several others were received respecting the expenses of the Court, the influence of the Queen in public affairs, the scene of the 10th of August, and what had passed in the Temple; and the most vague rumours and most trivial circumstances were eagerly caught at as proofs.

Marie Antoinette frequently repeated, with presence of mind and firmness, that there was no precise fact against her; that, besides, though the wife of Louis XVI., she was not answerable for any of the acts of his reign.

[At first the Queen, consulting only her own sense of dignity, had resolved on her trial to make no other reply to the questions of her judges than "Assassinate me as you have already assassinated my husband!" Afterwards, however, she determined to follow the example of the King, exert herself in her defence, and leave her judges without any excuse or pretest for putting her to death.—WEBER'S "Memoirs of Marie Antoinette."]

Fouquier nevertheless declared her to be sufficiently convicted; Chaveau-Lagarde made unavailing efforts to defend her; and the unfortunate Queen was condemned to suffer the same fate as her husband.